


in a house in an island there is a door; and the door is red

by SearchingforSerendipity



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: ASoIaF Kink Meme, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Braavos, Daenerys Centric, Gen, In the end she doesn't conquer Westeros, Post-Canon, she just goes back to her first home, the house with the red door.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-18
Updated: 2016-06-18
Packaged: 2018-07-15 20:43:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7237780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SearchingforSerendipity/pseuds/SearchingforSerendipity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>They say a witch lives in the house with the red door. Her hair is white, long and in funny braids, with little bells in it. They sing every time she walks, which is often, and everytime she rides, which is oftener. </em>
</p><p>  <em>She says she lived in the house as a child; she says it is home, and that she always only ever wanted to return home. <em></em></em></p><p> </p><p> <br/>  Dany and the red door, a homecoming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in a house in an island there is a door; and the door is red

**Author's Note:**

> This is an answer to this prompt: Daenerys  
> sweetbitter  
> April 10 2014, 02:39:55 UTC COLLAPSE  
> In the end she doesn't conquer Westeros, she just goes back to her first home, the house with the red door.
> 
> I own nothing.

 

Up in an island in a city veined by the sea there is a house, and the house has a red door.

It is a good house. Enduring, with a strong roof and white walls. In the winters it has thick curtains in the windows, and in the springs the ledges are crowded with bird nests. There are always crumbs on the ledges for the mother birds to feed the little birds, and study wooden houses for them to nest in. The door is always clean, and it is always painted red.

They say a witch lives in the house with the red door. Her hair is white, long and in funny braids, with little bells in it. They sing every time she walks, which is often, and everytime she rides, which is oftener. She says she lived in the house as a child; she says it is home, and that she always only ever wanted to return home. Her name is so clearly a lie nobody calls her for it. Dany she is for everyone, Dany the Witch.   She is a kind sort of witch, which counts a great deal in Bravoos, where there are witches a dozen, most of them hungry for blood and frothing over with old words of power. She is not terrible, so she isuseless, forgettable.

The witch lives alone. Nobody thinks to wonder if she is lonely; the neighbors nod to her in the streets, but nobody takes care of the witch. She does that herself, no husband or father to be seen. That is proof enough of her nature. But rich women do as they will in Braavos, and the witch is as rich as they come. It is known, for even if she for none but herself, her food is good and she never goes hungry.

She is generous, kind to beggars and wretches, which is why her neighbors forgive her affluence. With the children, especially, and the ones that used to be slaves most of all. She has the look of a childless mother, easy enough to spot in these days. She opens the doors of her barn to those who want to learn, Common Tongue and Old Valyrian and Dothraki. Every child is fed and clothed, given a chance to make something of themselves. They drink her lemon water and eat her scorched lemon cakes and play under her lemon tree, sour and sweet.

They play in her well-kept garden, the one she grew with help of her neighbors. There is a sycamore tree and a cherry tree, a wind-crooked lemon tree, rose bushes from Westeros and the wide-petaled flowers of Naarth, with long leaves where the butterflies live. The long grasses tickle the children's bare feet, rustle under her sandaled ones.

On market days, the neighbors knock on her door. Together they go the waterline,  a single body of sweeping clothes and chattering, to where the vendors and buyers crowd together, and the world comes together, the way it only does in Braavos. Colored silks, thin glass, fire tricks to make the crowd gasp.

She never gasps. What she loves is to watch the sea, listen to the news. Count the ships, remember the names, give them purposes. When the first sailor flirts with her, she almost slaps him. In time she learns to flirt back, but she prefers the bargaining. The witch has a good eye for the best produce, never flinches to tell for her friends when they are being robbed. Friends, not servants, yomen the same age as her, the weary remains of the little girls she used to okay with as a child. Now they are grown with dead husbands and quicker hands, children of their own to feed where she has none. Her children can feed themselves easily; they have no need of her. 

She buys herself a five-stringed lyre. It fits snugly in the crook of her arm, like a a babe, lilting discord coming from her thin fingers. In this she is unsure, fumbling.  It is an unknown delight, all her own. A friend buys a pipe. Together they make them all laugh until they are sore with their playing, _playing_. 

She writes down Dothraki, an alphabet of her own making, and in it great tales of the green sea, legends and rituals and the ways of the horsemen. All the learned ones are all agog with it. The ones that dare come to her for answers never return.

No ravens come for her. Messengers knock on the red door sometimes, bringing letters she only opens alone. But she has no servants, no family. Her friends are far away and her children have left her. One day, perhaps it will be family knocking on her door: wild riders of her blood, a young scholar, cockless devotees. One unlikely day, with no one praying for it. 

It is spring. Unspoken prayers have taken the place of shouted, whispered chants. She sweeps the porch of dust, leans her head towards the sun. It sinks in her, quietly, to her bones. 

The witch is kind, learned, generous. Lonely, sometimes. Her home is full of flowers and rich textiles, simple cookery. She wears trousers and vests, always. In the evenings she teaches herself to play the lyre; her music drifts from the open door, drifts down the canals, up in the meek breezes.

 

\--

 

Nobody sees her open the door. Nobody is there to hear how the hinges creak, with age, rust, ice. The color had faded to a pale pink, counted in frost. Nobody was there to see the frost melted under her hand.

Nobody hears the whispers the hears when she walks in: nobody nobody nobody but her breaches the doorway with her, sees her come in, close the door behind herself. 

Inside, there is silence, a woman breathing. Not the girl that left, not the conquered that came. A woman, breathing in, breathing out. Dany smiles. 

 

  
\--

  
People know the house, not because it is very grand, but because it is always very warm inside. In winter you could almost say it was summer, with how warm it is, even when snow falls in flurries of white and frost creeps over every living thing. First the plants freeze, the herbs in every garden, even the witches; then the great sea, with a coldness that seeps from the rivers to the islands that make the city.

It is a harsh winter, everyone says so. Crones and children freeze over in the night, food grows scant. The sky grows darker, the clouds heavier. Trade slows, stops.  Word from the rest of the world  is unbelievable,  rumors  of dragons , ice monsters, armies of direwolves. Westeros is a sore and the rest of the world is bleeding from it.  

Then the snow starts falling, without ending.

Winter is here, and with it comes the witch.

 None knows when she arrives, truly, nor how, for none dared leave the last kindling's fire to care for an old abandoned house. They only knew because she came to them. In every door she knocked, to the families with fevered children and the sick men, bundled them up in her rich myrish blankets and took them to her warm house.

Some people died anyway. Others did not, and those called her witch, for her warmth in the dead of the winter. Her food is terrible. Is is enough that is exists, and is shared. In time, the women teach her to light a fire, keep it going, make the broth bubble with spice-smells. The warmth is enough, for the moment. 

When the cold winds passed, and the wall ivy flowers budded purple and scarlet, the old worn door was painted red and the witch was home.

 

\--

 

Inside a house with a red door there lives a witch.

No one has ever seen anything from the witch to say she would want for anything at all, long for anything more than a clean porch and good food and good deeds, except that she always takes her horse to ride when the western wind comes. Her horse is the loveliest in this quarter of the city, bright as a star, as fast as a comet, with hoofs that ring out in the cobblestones and bridges. It stays still as the Titan while she looks out to the sea, green or blue or grey, to the lands beyond.

Then the witch shifts in the horse's back, and together they return to the home with the red door.

 


End file.
